Show HN: Rental data supplied by tenants in Ireland, searchable by all

[vinnyglennon]

I created https://www.howmuchrent.com last Friday to help bring this kind of transparency to Ireland, allowing people to submit their rents. Would love to get any HN feedback on the idea/website.

[dang]

https://www.howmuchrent.com/ is a better post for HN than a political opinion piece like https://labour.ie/news/2023/06/28/why-is-the-government-so-a... so I've changed the URL from that.

Readers: earlier comments are in response to that other link so you might want to look at both.

[Ecstatify]

The rent in Ireland is insane for the quality you get. My GF and I are currently living in my parents house. Collectively we earn ~€200K. New homes are in limited supply. Existing homes are poor quality but demand has increased the prices dramatically. We were looking at a new development and they increased the price by €80K. For a lot of people owning a home is becoming unrealistic.

[CalRobert]

We did a new build and the planners were a bunch of fossils who were horrified by the idea we didn't want a mouldy pile of concrete blocks. After we built it, the neighbours marveled at how warm a timber home could be - and beautiful.

We ended up moving to the Netherlands but remarkably there were so many homes for rent compared to Ireland it felt easy. I'm in a 5 bedroom house a 20 minute train ride from Amsterdam Centraal for about the price of a 4 bed semi-d in Tullamore. And I don't need a car here.

Ireland's a mess.

[ericmcer]

This seems like a global phenomenon. What is happening? Is this related to globalization? It feels wrong to blame any countries internal policies when it seems to be happening in every country simultaneously.

[CalRobert]

For what it's worth, I've been crawling Daft (Ireland's main rental and buying site) for several years. If you click on a property you'll see nearby listing history for both rentals and purchases, including asking rents.

https://gaffologist.com/

[ck1000]

Have they ever contacted you about potentially breaching their terms of service? https://support.daft.ie/hc/en-ie/articles/5127313728273-Term...

[adriancooney]

I love your site, I use it all the time and recommend it to all my friends. Thank you.

Do you offer historical exports of data? I’d love to create some visualisations of the housing situation in Ireland over time.

[vinnyglennon]

This is very impressive, work of art!

[anotherhue]

This is magnificent, thank you.

[anotherhue]

I moved from Dublin to NYC. Yes the rents here are insane, but there are places to rent! There is often zero availability in Irish cities.

[gottorf]

Zero availability would indicate either severe supply shortages due to an inability to build (zoning/regulatory problems a la some municipalities in the US? Something else?) or a price ceiling on rent, leading to an inability for the market to clear (with the equilibrium price being above the legal ceiling). Do you know which applies?

As an outsider, it would seem that Ireland has plenty of land on which to build, though the availability of building materials is another matter, and is something I can see Ireland being short on.

[krm01]

This is an intriguing project you've got here — clearly, there's utility in what you've built. I'd like to offer some constructive insights as a UI & UX designer.

Header: Consider refining the top nav. Placing the title/logo to the left and the notification icon alongside buttons on the top-right creates a sense of spatial balance. Shrinking the search field and centering it would not only economize space but also mitigate the initial impression that it's an intrusive advertisement.

Body: A slight reconfiguration can go a long way. Situate filters to the left and the map to the right to capitalize on users' muscle memory from interacting with similar interfaces. Use Inter (Google Fonts) for a cleaner look. If you want to avoid Google Fonts, just go with Verdana.

User Interaction: Your attempts to clarify map submissions suggest the current UX leaves room for improvement. A single, dedicated 'Submit Location' button leading to a streamlined modal or page can make the process more intuitive. It eliminates the need for repeated explanations scattered throughout the page.

Promotion: The 'Help Us Spread the Word' section risks being mistaken for an ad. Focus on optimizing the core experience; a compelling product naturally invites sharing.

Listing: Optimize space utilization in the list view. Presenting three cards side-by-side allows for easier scanning. Implementing a toggle for card and list views could be a user-friendly addition.

Overall, you've done commendable work. The key lies in fine-tuning the details to make the interface not just functional, but easier to use.

[falcor84]

This is about Ireland, but I'm curious whether there is any country in the world that does require this sort of transparency.

[BlackjackCF]

Not that I’m aware of, though it would be nice.

I get why though. I moved to Dublin from the US (from an expensive part of California) and I was shocked by the rent. It was more expensive than apartments I was paying for in the US, but Irish software wages are a fraction of what you’d get in the US.

[bdowling]

Not a country, but the City of Santa Monica, California, keeps a registry of rents for all rent-controlled units. Landlords are required to report an initial tenancy, which sets the starting rent. Each year after that, the City tells the landlord what the "Maximum Allowed Rent" is. All the documents relating to each property are publicly available and the city publishes an annual report.

Not all cities with rent control keep such a registry. (e.g., Los Angeles doesn't keep a registry, but does tell landlords the maximum they can raise the rent each year.)

[tmnvix]

In NZ you can check market rents by area on the Tenancy Services website. These are broken down by property type and lower, medium, and upper values based on recent bond lodgements.

https://www.tenancy.govt.nz/rent-bond-and-bills/market-rent/

[freitzkriesler2]

You can get a rough idea of what similar rents are for an area by going to redfin or Zillow and setting your filter parameters accordingly.

Doesn't Ireland have a similar saas service?

[astrange]

Berkeley, CA has one. The rest of California doesn't yet, but there are some attempts to do it. Keyword is "rental registry".

[Heloseaa]

Great work! This will actually be something very helpful to a lot of people!

I am curious how you gathered so much user input in the short time this project has been alive ? Where did you prospect for more users to input ? and especially, how do you validate that the inputs are valid and not fake inputs and/or spams ?

[metaphor]

Have you caught anyone attempting to poison the well yet?

[vinnyglennon]

Culver City, USA made an attempt at displaying Rents charged by landlords: https://medium.com/@hughfitzgerald/rents-charged-by-landlord...

[sperr11]

Awesome work. A similar registry is being worked on in Canada by the Vivre en Ville non-profit organisation (it is currently only available for Ontario and Quebec residents) : https://rentalregistry.ca/en/bumper

[wiredfool]

Little bug -- Legend says Green is renting, blue is sharing, but the map and the popups on the map are the other way around.

[vinnyglennon]

Thank you. I added a legend to the map to make it clearer a few minutes ago, can't spot the error. If you still say the text error, let me know. Renamed "Share Your Rent" to "Add Your Rent" to avoid confusion too.

[voxelghost]

Map is buggy, especially filtering of included nodes within the map boundary when zoomed in and panning, causing nodes(pins) to appear/disappear randomly.

As a more minor nit; It is also a bit annoying that the initial view doesn't show all of Ireland, and it is not possible to zoom out enough fit it.

[mparnisari]

Hi OP! Question, it says "source: user / daft". What is 'daft'? Might want to add a info popup for non-Irish :)

Also, the site says "Rental Data supplied by Tenant" but I see user: 3, daft: 453. So... it's not real tenant info right? Most of it comes from rental listings?

[anotherhue]

Not OP but it's a fairly dominant property search service in IE https://daft.ie/

[YeBanKo]

This is a great project! Are there any stopgaps to prevent malicious data entry?

[gigatexal]

This is a fantastic project and site. I 100% support it. It’d be awesome if we had more transparency in prices for many things. In fact I’m leaving my current job in a month or so and when I do I plan on sharing all of my compensation details and raise percentages the lot with all my colleagues. They should know and be able to benchmark their salaries against mine.

One feature that might be nice is being able to search by some metrics like square meters, number of room, bathrooms, etc and see aggregate stats on that. Median rent, high low etc.

[slater]

FYI I (and I'd think most folks) don't have the Roboto font installed, so everything's Times New Roman, here.

Latest Firefox, latest macOS.

[JamesBarney]

This might backfire.

Large scale landlords and would be tenants are both pretty familiar with the market. The only people not familiar with the market are mom and pop landlords who tend to not update rent with changing market conditions. This increased transparency might cause them to raise rents because it'd be easier to do comps, and they wouldn't previously undercharging a tenant to make it harder to find a new tenant at a higher price.

[richiebful1]

It's not that hard to figure out what people are charging for a similar unit today, especially in a larger market where a high percentage of listings are online.

Some mom and pop landlords (including myself) prioritize for having sustainable, enjoyable tenants. The gold standard is a tenant who requires little upkeep, pays on time, and stays for a long time. I won't increase the rent on tenants who are easy to work with.

If a new prospective tenant asked why the price is going up, I'd explain that it's the going market rate, and they're welcome to find another place. I doubt transparency would change anything when listing prices are already public and rarely negotiable

[BlackjackCF]

I don’t know how true this is anymore. Apps like Zillow, Apartments.com and the like make it very easy for even small-time landlords to figure out what the market is.

[seydor]

online shopping seems to have had the opposite effect

[andrewstuart]

Make it global.